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First Impressions: Microsoft Surface Pro

Microsoft’s Surface Pro launched today, and I’ve spent the last 24 hours evaluating their sophomore PC hardware effort with mostly positive observations. What follows are my initial impressions of the Surface Pro, with a detailed review coming down the pipe within a week.

Surface Pro ≠ Tablets

First, one important guideline to keep in mind: I won’t be comparing the Surface Pro to the iPad, because the Surface Pro defies characterization as a tablet. Anyone slapping the same label on these devices is doing you a disservice. The Surface Pro runs a full desktop OS, has the internals of an ultrabook, and resulting benchmarks put all tablets to shame.

Having only used the Touch Cover on the Surface RT, it needs to be said that the Type Cover is in a league of its own. The physical keys have a subtle inward curve, and while the amount of travel is minimal, it’s a joy to type on. I instantly adapted from my full-sized ergonomic keyboard and am punching this article up in Word without any slowdown or errors. I would be comfortable using it for my daily writing duties at Forbes, and it’s a no-brainer for productivity on the road. If you purchase the Surface Pro, don’t leave without the Type Cover.

Display, Graphics…and Gaming?

The Surface Pro’s 1920×1080 display is stunning and a noticeable upgrade from Surface RT’s 1366×768 resolution. As with RT, this is a best-in-class panel with pure whites and vibrant, realistic color.

Beyond productivity, the Surface Pro has another distinguishing trait which separates it from the tablet market: gaming chops. Not just Angry Birds or Jetpack Joyride, but AAA core titles like Portal 2 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Portal 2 ran surprisingly well using these settings and a 1920x1080 resolution

I installed and played both on my Surface Pro and was pleasantly surprised with the results. Portal 2 ran smoothly at 1920×1080 with medium shaders and high texture detail (see image, right). XCOM performed equally well at 1920×1080. (At a reader’s request, I’ll also test StarCraft II and Diablo 3 for my final review.) With Intel’s HD Graphics 4000, an Intel Core i5, and 4GB of RAM, the early verdict is that a Steam install wouldn’t be out of line. Hardcore gamers need not apply, but casual or “mid-core” gamers should dive in.

Eye Candy: Not Without A Sacrifice

The higher resolution display doesn’t delight your eyes without some compromise. After installing Chrome and Steam I noticed that both rendered blurry text. Chrome auto-updated this morning with the option to launch in “Windows 8 mode,” restoring the browser to its ideal readability. But what about Steam, iTunes, and other pieces of non-optimized software?

What’s happening here is that the global magnification settings for the desktop are defaulted to 150%. This looks stellar for native apps, but 3rd party software typically exhibits blurred text as a result. This can be solved by changing the magnification settings back to 100%, but the Surface Pro’s sharp 1920×1080 resolution means that doing so will render text and icons so small, most of us will have to squint. While this is ideal for an external display, Windows 8 doesn’t yet allow independent scaling of multiple displays, and that’s a real problem.

To see the difference between native and 3rd party software text rendering, click this image to enlarge it.

Microsoft is aware of this issue, however, and in a recent Reddit AMA stated that “The Windows team is aggressively working on this feature to fix this for all high resolution Windows devices. We don’t have a date yet to share, so sorry.” I’ll keep you posted.

Improved Audio

Compared to Surface RT, the Pro’s audio capabilities have undergone a dramatic increase in quality. Music is louder, crisper, and has a shade more bass response. The speakers are in the same general location as the RT, but notice in the picture below how the top half of the Pro has venting slots. Not only are the drivers slightly larger, but I suspect the design also improves the acoustics. Rest assured you’ll be able to enjoy podcasts, Hulu Plus or Xbox Music from a distance without straining to hear.

Top: Surface RT | Bottom: Surface Pro

Battery Life Observations

The Surface Pro’s battery ran down during the roughly 3 hour process of writing this first impressions piece. This included 30 minutes of gaming, 15 minutes of music streaming, and constant web activity. Auto-brightness was on, and I kept Outlook and MetroTwit running in the background. This is by no means conclusive testing, but in terms of anecdotal observation, battery life may be a concern. I’m confident that enabling battery-saving features, reducing brightness, and not putting the Surface Pro through “review-style” paces will result in 4 to 5 hours of battery life. Apparently all this horsepower doesn’t come without some sacrifice.

Since this is all about first impressions, I’ll say I’m enthusiastic about the Surface Pro in its role as an ultrabook and productivity machine. During the next week, I’ll rigorously test its tablet incarnation, run it through some benchmarks, and give you a more detailed analysis of battery life, gaming performance, digitizer pen, wedge mouse, and general usability.

For those not willing to wait for the full review – perhaps those of you holding out for Surface Pro over the RT – I seriously doubt you’ll be disappointed with this hardware.

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One of the most non-biased, fan-based reviews so far. Surface Pro’s battery life truly is a concern when it’s just about 1/3 of iPad. Do you really need more power to read email and web browse or would you rather carry one device 1 day. And where’s the Pro’s cellular radio for on-the-road computing? It doesn’t have one.

Agreed on battery life, but you’re committing the cardinal sin of comparing Surface Pro to iPad. You don’t need more power to read email or browse the web — but you do need it for playing AAA games, Photoshop, audio editing, and serious productivity. (Surface Pro ≠ Tablets)

They may not compete directly, but they do compete. After all, there is always the alternative of having an ultrabook and a tablet.

If the Surface Pro doesn’t provide a good tablet experience, I’ll use an iPad or a Nexus 10. And, if I’m using one of those, the Pro will have to compete on its ability to replace a laptop.

I hope the “tweener” concept works and am very interested in this (though I’ll probably wait for Haswell processors to come online before buying a device in this class), but turbo-tablets (I just made that up….good term?) will clearly be competing with tablets when consumers make their choices.

$900 for a Surface, or $900 for a comparable Ultrabook + $600 for a tablet + the burden of carrying both around.

I’m a SUV kinda guy, since I can buy an SUV for $30k as opposed to a Truck for $25k and a sedan for $25k. A truck is probably better for towing and a car is probably more comfortable, but an SUV does both good enough that I’m willing to go without the best of both worlds for the convenience of having an all-in-one and to save a lot of money.